Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Thievery

Once the gangsters pillage all pensions public and private, they will come after Social Security.

Thanks to worthless D.C. politicians, they have created enough holes in ERISA to drive a whole fleet of semis through:

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act, enacted in 1974, forbids companies from cutting their employees’ pension obligations for work they have already performed. But a subsequent 2006 law, signed by George W. Bush, allowed under-funded multi-employer pensions to stop paying some benefits, such as disability, death benefits, and early retirement.

The PBGC was conceived as self-financing, with insurance payouts to be covered by premiums paid by corporations. But these premiums have been steadily dwindling, as successive administrations from both parties have introduced loopholes to allow companies to reduce their contributions.

The Times noted that the PBGC multi-employer fund “now has premiums of about $110 million a year to work with. All it would take is the failure of one big plan to wipe out the whole program.”

Defined benefit pensions now cover only 18 percent of private-sector workers, down from 35 percent in the 1990s, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These pension plans have largely been replaced by completely inadequate defined-contribution 401(k) plans. The bureau of labor statistics found that the median households aged 55–64 with a retirement savings account had just $100,000 to retire, or about twice the yearly household income for older households.

We are almost right back where we were 50 years ago with the Studebaker mess, which helped create ERISA in the first place.

It surprises me people even have 100k in those sham 401(k)s, but people have absolutely NO idea how much money they would have to save to even have a tiny pension of 300 a month like mine is. It's well over 100k for 30 years, especially including those cost-of-living raises.